Intro to POW in Russia

50 YEARS ON, STALIN CASTS A SHADOW OVER RUSSIA

Agence France-Presse (AFP)
Moscow, Russia, March 2, 2003
"In USSR 800,000 people were officially recorded as shot during the Soviet
period. But up to 30 million people are estimated by Western historians to have
died between 1918 and 1956 in Stalinist repression, civil war, famine and
collectivization, although the true figure may never be known."

"Some time after the second war foreign offices began to compute just how many humans Stalin had ordered killed. Nothing to do with World War II casualties.

The British guessed perhaps seven, eight millions. Progressive liberal people in both Britain and America were reluctant to believe that he'd ever executed anybody except genuine, dangerous party plotters.

The US State Department, of course riddled with its fear of Communism, its guess was 20 millions. Not until the collapse of Communism in 1991 did the Russians open up their own archives. The correct, Kremlin figure was 27 millions. "

"Everything must be locked away - every image of the slave labour camp, torture chamber, execution squad, even pictures of the daily, dreary life of the people, the daily bread and soap queues, everything except the model farms dolled up for showing off to foreign visitors. "

Deportations

"Stalin's forcible resettlement of over 1.5 million people, mostly Muslims, during
and after World War II is now viewed by many human rights experts in Russia as one of
his most drastic genocidal acts. Volga Germans and seven nationalities of Crimea and the
northern Caucasus were deported: the Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush,
Balkars, Karachai, and Meskhetians. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal
region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians." More of this at:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/depo.html

70th anniversary of the deportation of the population of Western Ukraine to Siberia

Operation West

After completion of the Soviet-German war, the activities of the Ukrainian insurgent army was directed against the Soviet power structures. Concerned about the difficult situation in Western Ukraine, the political leadership of the USSR is constantly looking for new ways to neutralise the insurgency, writes “UKRINFORM“.

That deportation has become a powerful and effective tool to crack down on “dissent” of the Ukrainians. In 1944-1946 from Western Ukraine to distant areas of the USSR were deported 14 728 families of the members of the national liberation movement.

However, the party leadership demanded that law enforcement agencies do not stop there. The biggest deportation of the population of Western Ukraine was held on 21 October 1947. She went down in history under the code name Operation West.

The operation began in Lviv in two hours nights in the house of Lvov were raided by the military and after a short search was allowed in a hurry to gather personal belongings, after which the whole families in trucks delivered to the railroad. From 2 to 4 o’clock in the morning the same fate befell the inhabitants of Rava-Russian, Zhovkva, Busk, town of, Sycamore. In Bukovina, Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Ternopil all started at 6 am.

Operation West was developed by employees of the MGB by all the canons of military operations, commanded by the Deputy Minister of internal Affairs of the USSR woodpeckers. On the operation every six hours, reported the Minister of state security, General Savchenko and Minister of internal Affairs of the USSR General Strokach.

During the evictions, security forces discovered an underground hiding-places, seized weapons, literature and nationalist anti-Soviet postcard, was taken prisoner by members of the underground. The property of the deportees were confiscated and transferred to state ownership.

During the day from Western Ukraine were evicted 26 682 families, or 76 192 people: 18,866 men, 35 152 women and 22,174 children.

The next day the first train went to remote areas of the USSR. All deportees waiting for forced labor in mines and farms of Siberia.

Operation West became one of the most massive and short-term deportation of Western Ukrainians. However, it was not the first and not the last. In total, from 1944 to 1953 in Western Ukraine were arrested, over 500 thousand people, arrested about 134 thousand, 150 thousand killed, deported outside Ukraine for life over 200 thousand people.

"...The 'secret war" Tolstoy goes on to vividly describe was the fierce campaign Stalin waged against the Russian population - a struggle which often took priority over pressing military problems. For example, Stalin tied up much of the rail network in western Russia with slave trains of captives from the Baltic states, instead of devoting all rolling stock to the reinforcement of the frontlines. At L'vov, where the Soviet 4th Army was fighting desperately to prevent its surrender, Stalin's major concern was that the NKVD finish liquidating potential Ukrainian opponents of the regime rather than order the local security forces to join in the battle against advancing Axis units. While Stalin pleaded with the British to rush more aid and take further action, the NKVD labor camp guards were doubled in number from 500,000 to one million heavily armed men.

"Standard treatments of this period always claim that the Soviet Union lost over 20 million people during the Second World War. Tolstoy makes a convincing case that the actual total is probably closer to 30 million, maybe even more - with about a third of these deaths attributable to Axis actions. The blame for as many as 23 million deaths is placed with Stalin and his NKVD henchmen...." Taken from Stalin's War: Victims and Accomplices by CHARLES LUTTON

..."at the Yalta conference, FDR not only allowed nations such as Poland to become slaves of the Soviet Union, he actually agreed to "repatriate" those Eastern Europeans who had fought against the Soviets. (On this point, see Julius Epstein's book Operation Keelhaul, and visit the Museum of Communism). Many Russians eagerly fought alongside the German troops on the Eastern front - the crimes against the Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks which the Communists had perpetrated demanded retribution. Similarly, it was the violation of Polish sovereignty which had brought Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Yet now that the war was coming to an end, Poland was not to be a sovereign nation. Instead, Poland was to be raped by the Communists. The Soviets are estimated to have shipped one million Poles to death camps in Siberia. Similar fates greeted the formerly hopeful residents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania..."
Excerpt taken from lewrockwell.com

Kresy (POWs from Poland)

The Kresy-Siberia list brings into contact people from countries around the world with a special interest in the tragedy of the 1.7 million Polish citizens of various faiths and ethnicities (Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, etc.) deported from eastern Poland (Kresy) in 1940-42 to special labour camps in Siberia, Kazakhstan and Soviet Asia. Some 115,000 of these were evacuated through Persia in 1942 as soldiers of Anders Army and their families . . . Film & info: A Forgotten Odyssey See this site for dates and places to see this film.

"From 1944 to the late 1950's, the Berianist Soviet government repressed the Ukrainians. A total of three million Ukrainians (out of a 1950 population of 53 million) were eventually deported to Siberian labour camps, while another million Ukrainians died as a direct result of political terror." For more, see: http://www.ahtg.net/TpA/ukr2001.html

Soviet prisonswww.decades.com/ByDecade/1970-1979/7.htm
10/8/1970 Soviet author Alexander Solzhenitsyn was named winner of the Nobel Prize for
literature. ref#34919
12/28/1973 Alexander Solzhenitsyn published "Gulag Archipelago" in Paris. It was an
expose of the Soviet prison system. ref#36013

Moscow, 5 March: Academician Aleksandr Yakovlev: "Recalling Stalin's oppression, Yakovlev said that after the Great Patriotic War [World War II] 1.8 million prisoners of fascist concentration camps, upon their return to Russia, were thrown into GULAG camps on charges of high treason. Many of them died." Actual figures are not known, as documentation is scarce, per Stalin's instructions.

On April 12, 2003, members of Franciscan Environmental Movement opened an exhibition 'SYBIR PRO MOMENTO' about prisoners of soviet labour camps in Siberia. The Official opening ceremony was started by Senator Anna Kurska and Vice-Mayor of Gdansk, Waldemar Nocny

Members of Union of Siberian Prisoners also took part in opening - Mrs Riedl, prof. Zgierski and dr Sochacki (scientific chief of the Exhibition)

The Exhibition contains pictures and other evidence on the deportations of Polish people to Siberia and on soviet concentration camps. We also collect evidence of other communist crimes like the big artificial Famine in Ukraine in thirties. In future we will create a library here. This place is the beginning of a Museum on communist crimes and the struggle of Polish people against totalitarianism.

We will be grateful for any help in collecting of photos and other documents (best sent in 'tif' format)

In 1946 an artist named Nikolai Getman was imprisoned in the Soviet Union's GULAG.
During the 1920s, the Soviet Union developed a system of extreme repression
and terror that inflicted forced famines, purges, executions, and arrests on
the people of the Soviet Union. Under Josef Stalin, forced-labor camps in Siberia
became the pillar of that system. They were one of the principal techniques
by which Stalin exerted absolute control over the lives and decisions of the
Soviet people. An estimated 50 million people died as a result of Stalin's
inhuman policies of terror and repression.

On 16 June 1945, 1st Canadian Corps transferred 226 Georgians, survivors of a mutiny staged on the Dutch island of Texel by the Wehrmacht's 822nd Georgia Infanterie Battalion, to the Dutch mainland port of Den Helder and from there, in trucks, to Wilhelmshaven.

On 12 September 1945, minus 12 of their number, the Georgians arrived at a Red Army transit camp in Goldberg, near Stettin /Szczecin, Poland.

Where were they between those two dates?

I know that they were reportedly handed over to un-named Soviet Liaison Officers at Wilhelmshaven but this does not necessarily mean that they were immediately sent Eastwards?

The Canadian 2 Corps had overall responsibility for the Wilhelmshaven / Emden region. On 11 July 1945, 2 Corps formally transferred jurisdiction to the British 30 Corps / 3 Canadian Inf Division - CAOF.

The latter formation subsequently conducted most of the Candian Sector's East-bound repatriation convoys from a Soviet DPs ' camp 'somewhere near Wilhelmshaven' and at Ohmstede-Osternburg in Stadt. The Oldenburg Soviet DPs 'POWs camp had at least 3,000 occupants in June 1945. In June-July, repatriation began of, for example, Chechen and other North Caucasians...were the Texel Georgians among these returnees?.....By late-August, most of the 'Russians' had gone from Oldenburg with a large contingent leaving in the last week of that month.

If the Georgians were at Oldenburg, they most likely travelled to and may have spent some time at the large DPs' camp at Adelheide near Delmenhorst. From there they probably went to Ludwigslust / Magdeburg. Would the Wilhelmshaven camp residents have followed a similar route...?

Whether Ludwigslust, Magdeburg or Stendal...the three main Frontier posts used for repatriations by 30 Corps or some other FCP...where, when and guarded by / handed to whom were the Texel Georgians transferred to Soviet custody?

Hi, I'd like to find out about my deceased grandfathers' WW II POW records. He
was a German captured by Russians in Europe, I think in1945? How would I
go about finding out info on him? It's important to me. Thanks rabsab2@juno.com

From the table of contents this website, click on captured German records at NARA National Archives. Ask them about their Russian collections.

3/24/05 Dear Madam
My father-in-law was a Ukrainian refugee named Fredir Lysen, possibly spelt Lizen or some other way.
He never contacted his family for fear the Russians would persecute them . He never got to know whether they lived or died. He was captured in 1940 in the village? He lived near Lviv. He was put in labour camps and whilst there, there was a fire in his billet which destroyed all the family photographs--one or two he'd been carrying in his wallet. I felt it was a sign that they may all be dead?
His mother was called Parasceavia. We think his father was called Dmitr i/ Dmetrie. He spoke so little of the war that we know very little except that he was beaten, starved, etc.; he still had the flogging marks on his back. He came here and made friends with another expatriate, Gregor Pywowarkzuk, in 1947. They were put work camps for nearly four years in this country before they had their freedom and went to live in Bolton Lancashire where they both married and remain friends till their deaths.

I have been trying to look for Red Cross sites on the Web or a telephone number or anything to contact the people of authorities--anyone who might know how to get hold of the information we need, which would be anything from what happened to his family to where he was held? Please can you help us in any way clues contact. Yours truly Stuart Cook

RH 49/129 Planning and development of Stalag VII A at Moosburg from Sept. 1939 to Dec. 1940 (report of camp commander Colonel Nepf), 1941 See: History 1939-1945

RH 53-7 POW affairs: planning of POW camps; organization; staff; orders for the 'high commander of the POWs in the army district'; reorganization of POW affairs, 1939/45 RH 53-7 Accomodation and work for POWs in the army district VII. - Report of 13 Dec 1939RH 53-7 Proceedings against the commander of Oflag VII A Murnau, Colonel Oster, because of
alleged grievances in this POW camp, 1943

The "Deutsche Dienststelle für die Benachrichtigung der nächsten Angehürigen von Gefallenen der ehemaligen deutschen Wehrmacht" (German office for the notification of
next-of-kin of members of the former German Wehrmacht who were killed in action) ist
the successor of the 'Wehrmachtsauskunftstelle für Kriegerverluste und Kriegsgefangene
- WASt' (Wehrmacht information office for war losses and POWs). Inquiries about
individual POWs can be directed to this office. It must be noted that the files about allied
POWs were confiscated by US and Soviet troops in 1945. Nevertheless, the Deutsche
Dienststelle still has some 1,500,000 files on foreign POWs in German custody. Inquiries can
be submitted online by visiting the homepage of the Deutsche Dienststelle.

The International Tracing Service of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
has also personal files, mainly on people detained in concentration and labour camps, on
forced labourers and on displaced persons. An inquiry form is available on the homepage
of the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) (=> Links). Sources:

E-mails from those who wish a connection

My name is Benjamin Karp. I am working on a book about the DP Camps after WWII. I have been trying to interview people who were there in a greater understanding of this time period.

At the present time, I still have several areas that need to be address. More specifically, views from the British and Soviet Zones about life and daily activities in those camps. Is there a way that this can be posted on your website, and/or could you direct me to someone who could help with my research questions.

I want to thank you in advance for your help. It is greatly appreciated.